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With due acknowledgement, some of the following quotations of wry wisdom appear in John DeGarmo’s book, The Road to Ballybunion, “many of us operate under the mistaken belief that the best golf is in Scotland, when, of course, it’s been in Ireland all along. The dunes are higher, the wind is stiffer, the grass is […]

A classic links always sits beside the sea, a shoreline or estuary and features sand dunes and sandy, waste ground recovered from ebbing tides, usually by an evolutionary process over centuries. The word ‘links’ actually means that the uncultivated shoreline is ‘linked’ to more fertile soil further inland. In the early days of golf, the […]

When Tom Watson came to Ballybunion on a regular basis in 1980s and 1990s, he always lodged in the Marine Links Hotel downtown where the bar is named the “Hook and Socket.” Tom, and all golfers know what a hook is but what might be the meaning of the word socket? “In Ireland,” Tom was […]

When the Golfing Union of Ireland President-in-waiting, Commander George Crosbie of Cork, ‘bulldozed’ his colleagues into bringing the 1937 Irish Amateur Championship to a previously ‘unknown’ Ballybunion, he couldn’t have anticipated the resounding success that would follow. Somehow, the club committee had sensed that this was the club’s chance to make its mark on the […]

The American golfer steered his powerful motorcar into the parking lot at Ballybunion, one of Ireland’s most formidable courses. He was fully determined to play a better round than the last time he was there. As he extricated his bag from the trunk, he noticed his caddie from his previous visit approaching. Greeting the caddie […]

Ireland is still a place of castles and thatched-roof cottages. A land of music and easy laughter but in golfing terms the country is far ahead of the curve. In the 2000s, Ireland is the home of four major champions, Padraig Harrington, Graeme McDowell, Darren Clarke and Rory McIlroy as well as, perhaps, Europe’s greatest […]

The membership of Ballybunion Golf Club in Ireland has voted overwhelmingly to lift and re-lay all 18-greens on the Old Course next winter, but possibly, a more striking development is its approval to build a new 7th green to once and for all deal with any potential erosion in that area of the links. A […]